Interchangeable parts technology in the Industrial Age was about making unique lumps of matter indistinguishable, and then slapping on locally unique-enough serial numbers to redistinguish them, via bits that provided functionally sufficient addressability in a local namespace.
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The combination of the two layers of technology relating to interchangeability, uniqueness, identifiability, addressability — the identity stack — means every collection of bits and/or atoms can now be exactly what it needs to be, at nearly the cost of just the atoms and energy.
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The identity stack is 3 layers: interchangeable parts manufacturing, distinguishable information sets, and computationally costly cryptography. It serves to separate material function from social, cultural, and political identity functions by separating the time and energy costs.
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This means material function can get as cheap as physics permits, and as fast as technology — increasingly this means energy technology — improves. Non-material functions relating to social notions of status, ownership, rights, and so on, can be priced at will.
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This trend, of separation of material and social functions of technology at the lowest level attainable — time/energy costs at the level of bits and atoms — is something like the separation of church and state for our times. For better or worse, the future will be shaped by it.
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